On today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co, I’m sharing a conversation with National Review‘s Jim Geraghty from CPAC 2020, where we discuss the fascinating phenomenon of Michael Bloomberg losing support from gun control advocates, many of whom are vocally backing other candidates despite his longtime dedication to the anti-gun cause.

As Geraghty points out, Bloomberg doesn’t really build coalitions. He buys them instead. While that may help to swing elections when his organizations are pouring tons of money into races for other candidates, when Bloomberg’s actually on the ballot himself his money can’t buy likability.

“He’s got enormous charitable contributions, he has an enormous ability, and the first thing people in New York said was ‘Hey, we like that! This guy doesn’t owe anything to anybody’,” Geraghty explained. “And then they suddenly realize he got into office and he didn’t owe anything to anyone, and he could kind of do whatever he wanted. All of the people who would usually stand up and say ‘Mayor Bloomberg, you shouldn’t do that’, well, he’d already given them this donation, the city had given them a grant, and all of a sudden everybody in the power structure of New York City was sorta bought off.”

It worked in New York City, where Bloomberg was able to serve three terms as mayor. What a lot of folks forget is that in order to win that third term, Bloomberg spent more than $100-million, and ended up capturing 50.7% of the vote. It was the most expensive local election in U.S. history, and Bloomberg barely squeaked out a win.

Now, Bloomberg has spent five times that amount on his Democratic presidential bid, and there’s no guarantee he’s going to win a single state on Super Tuesday, much less rack up a large amount of delegates. That won’t stop him from continuing his campaign up to the convention if it looks like no candidate will garner enough delegates to win the nomination outright, but it speaks volumes about good a candidate Michael Bloomberg really is. The more people get to know him, the less they like him.